


Locking Eyes, Holding Hands

by capripian



Series: This Year (Sasha Week 2021) [4]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dissociation, Gen, Reconciliation, Season 4 But What If Sasha?, Spoilers for Rome Arc (Rusty Quill Gaming)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28868730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capripian/pseuds/capripian
Summary: Day 4: Greener GrassAncient Rome takes one fewer. Sasha wakes up eighteen months later, and has to deal with seeing an old friend again.Someone who left, and someone who came back only to lock her up. Needless to say, it's a complicated situation. They'll make it work, though. They always have.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Series: This Year (Sasha Week 2021) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111829
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33
Collections: Sasha Week 2021





	Locking Eyes, Holding Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Sasha Week day 4, Greener Grass. The prompt was intended to refer to a timeline where things are happier, which I think I got around to in the end. I simply think Sasha and Zolf should have gotten to reconnect and 156 only encouraged me in this respect.
> 
> Source for the title of this fic and the series is, as always, This Year by the Mountain Goats. 
> 
> Warnings for Sasha dissociating, typical quarantine-based invasions of privacy and imprisonment, and some discussion of grief and loss with regards to Grizzop and Eldarion.

Sasha’s eyes are closed, but she still feels the air disturbed as two people leave the circle. She hears Azu’s gasp, and all too sudden the warping of space solidifies into one single painful moment, and then-

She comes to, on the hot baking earth. Everything hurts, her arms and legs and back joints feeling overstretched and too tight at the same time. She lifts her head off the ground, hand already to a dagger, before she sees… Einstein?

“Oh hello, Sasha! It’s good to see you, a lot has happened!”

Everyone starts to pick themselves up, and she can see Bi Ming dust himself off next to her. He’s alright. She nods to herself. Of course he is, he can take care of himself.

The others seem to be in order as well. Hamid checks over his little brother nervously, and Eddie steps over to Einstein with a smile. Azu looks happy as well, before realizing something.

“Grizzop. I… where is Grizzop?”

Oh. Oh no. 

* * *

It turns out everything is different, now. A plague. Death, destruction. Eighteen months lost. 

Eldarion is gone, too. She doesn’t really know how to feel about it. Eldarion was cruel, locked her up and didn’t let her fight, but she still said she cared. Sasha pushes that away. It’s for her to deal with another time.

She goes through the motions in a haze. Teleportation to a safe house, quarantine for seven days, teleport somewhere else. Sasha’s blurry through it. Half-there, half-not. Most of the time she hides.

Grizzop is gone. Eldarion is gone. Sasha still has Azu and Bi Ming and Hamid, but it feels... distant.

She was like this when Brock disappeared too. Hollow. Back then it just resulted in scars. Now it feels like the whole world is going to come crashing down on her shoulders.

* * *

They go to an inn. She feels Hamid fall asleep against her, feels her eyelids start to droop as well. She wants to fight. She wants to yell at the innkeeper. She wants to stab somebody, anybody. She wants to cry, to scream.

She falls asleep, and wakes up in the dark again. 

Always in the dark. Born in the dark, and, well, she guesses she’ll die in the dark as well. Seems fitting. It’s what she’s good for, after all. It’s where she belongs. 

Azu is awake, pounding on the bars of the cell. Sasha doesn’t think Azu knows she’s awake. She sticks to a shadow, tries to stay out of sight. Doesn’t make any sudden movements. Thief’s training is hard to break.

The bars clang with Azu’s insistence, and Sasha flinches slightly but she doesn’t think anyone notices. A voice comes from the dark. A voice she didn’t think she’d ever hear again.

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you. That’s adamantine, that is. You aren’t gettin’ through. Just relax and try to get some sleep.”

Sasha sits up, sudden and noticeable in a way she’d normally hate. Azu turns to her, concerned. “Sasha? Are you alright?”

She squints ahead, hands grasping the bars. She can’t make him out, the darkness too thick, but she knows. “...Zolf?”

There’s some movement from the shadows before he speaks. “Hey, Sasha.”

Hamid is still asleep on the other side of Azu, so she keeps her voice down. “What... what happened?”

“Sasha,” Azu says, “Who is this?”

“He used to be with us, he... he saved me. And he left. Zolf, what’re you doin’ here?”

Zolf sighs, and stands up from his seat with a creak. “Sasha, I... can’t do this right now. I’ll go get you all some food and amenities and such, alright?”

He waits, looking to her for a response. She remembers a conversation about choices, about how they all had the right to freedom and the right to leave. She wonders what Zolf thinks of it now. 

She nods, and he walks away on heavy, clanking feet. That’s new. Everything about this Zolf feels new.

* * *

Hamid wakes later and is, of course, shocked. His blubbering is mostly nothing, so she tunes it out and watches as Zolf lights a torch and finally reveals himself.

He’s... different. Not bad-different the way Brock was bad-different when she found him, but different in a way that’s hard to parse.

His hair is white. Sasha finds her hand drifting to the white patch in her own hair, the result of a painful mistake. What mistake did Zolf make to get the same?

The trident is gone. Dolphin, too. Good, she thinks. Poseidon didn't listen to Zolf, tried to put him in a role he didn't want for himself. He gave Zolf nice things, like those water legs, but only because he wanted Zolf to stay under his thumb and follow his rules. The gifts meant nothing, because they were given by someone who wanted something out of it. 

She wonders how much of that is true and how much of that is just how she thinks of Eldarion.

He looks at her from behind bars, and everything is still wrong. Zolf wouldn't do this. He knew how much she hated being locked up, didn't he? 

More changed than she thought, Sasha supposes. Wilde got hardened, and apparently so did Zolf. 

* * *

The rest of quarantine passed in a similar haze. Azu exercising, Hamid asking for comforts, and Sasha sulking in the shadows. The inspections were... bad. She let the emptiness hold her for a few moments before Hamid or Azu shook her out of it and told her it was over. 

The hot bath afterward was nice. She remembers the luxurious bath in la Triomphe, the scented French soaps and fluffed towels. Even further back, she remembers the baths Eldarion forced her into. The ones that ended up in tight dresses and tied-back hair and confiscated knives.

She’s on the roof of the building, crouched in the night-time air. Has to have time to think, and this feels familiar. The trees all around her are a far cry from the city streets of London or Paris or Cairo, but the climb was rote and practiced.

She’s up here to think. She needs some space, and she needs somewhere safe. No one can get her up here, so she loses herself in thought.

Zolf left. Zolf left and she understood why but it still felt like another wound on top of the ones opening up all over her. She was so scared. So afraid that she would die and never know what was wrong with her. The bloodied sheets and the gaunt features and the darkening eye bags felt like omens of the inevitable. 

She was healed, of course, and the others helped her, but she wonders if Zolf considered that he was all between her and her rightful death. The death he saved her from in the first place.

And now Zolf is... back. She still pictures him in her head with blond hair and sea legs, the way he was a few weeks ago. Or, rather, eighteen months ago.

That’s still going to take a bit to sink in. He had eighteen months to change, to become a different person. She’s not sure if that different person is better or worse yet.

* * *

A day or two later, when they’re meant to set out for a nearby alchemist’s village, Zolf takes her aside. Not in the way Eldarion used to ‘take her aside’ for scolding, but the way Zolf always has. Earnest, calm. 

“I’ve been thinkin’, and we should probably have that conversation now.”

Sasha nods, fiddling with the pockets in her coat. 

“Sasha, I’m... I’m real sorry I left. I had to, but that doesn’t mean it was okay to leave you behind without helpin’ you with your illness. And I’m sorry I locked you up. I know it’s for safety, but.”

He sighs, furrows his brow. “Listen, I’ve been imprisoned before. You were there for one time. But beyond that, I understand not wantin’ to be trapped in a confined space. You can get crushed, like that.” He tugs on his beard a little, a half-distant look in his eyes.

“So, listen, I understand if you don’t forgive me. I understand if you don’t want to work with me, and I can... we can work around that. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But I didn’t want to hurt you, and I just thought you should... know, I guess?”

Sasha hesitates, suddenly awkward as Zolf’s gaze levels on her and he falls quiet. She should say something. She’s not sure what to say. She’s never been much good with words.

“Zolf, mate, I forgive you. What you did hurt me, sure, but you didn’t know it would. And it ended up gettin’ fixed, my illness, so don’t worry. Turns out it was undeath?”

Zolf makes a surprised sound.

“Who knew, right? But it got fixed, and I’m not doin’ okay but I’m not mad at you for it. You were trying your best, and you had a right to leave if you needed to. You weren’t s’posed to stay just for me, that’s no fair for either of us.”

He nods, still looking cautious. “Still. You don’t have to try n’ make it just like it was before. It’s okay if we can’t be friends anymore.”

Sasha makes an affirmative noise. “We… have a lot of work to do. It can’t be the same, but… here’s to trying?”

She lifts up an imaginary drink, and he smiles and does the same. “Here’s to trying.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please leave comments or kudos.
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr at @capripian and @capripian-arts, or talk to me on discord at fey dyke#2644.
> 
> If I've made any typos point 'em out in the comments and I'll fix them.
> 
> Also, to give credit where credit is due, Zolf's first line is from RQG 128: Tadaima and not from my brain.


End file.
